Picturing Energy: Approaches to Energy Films

On 6 October 2017, the MCE project and the British Film Institute (BFI) co-organised a workshop on energy related films. The event combined presentations and film viewing sessions, in addition to a pre-workshop energy film screening. Participants came from across disciplines and fields such as historians, geographers, film and media scholars, archivists, curators and filmmakers.

Session 1: Energy Landscape in Films
Chair: Vanessa Taylor (University of Greenwich)
• David Matless (University of Nottingham), ‘Atomic Landscapes’
• Karen Sayer (Leeds Trinity), ‘Energy Transitions in the English countryside’

Session 2: Energy Films and Industry
Chair: Rebecca Wright (University of Sussex)
• Patrick Russell (BFI), ‘Faces of Britain’
• Brian Jacobson (University of Toronto), ‘Film at the Dawn of French Nuclear Energy’

Q&A with Vicki Leslie (Tenner Films, creator of THE ATOM: A LOVE AFFAIR)

Comments
• Scott Anthony (University of Cambridge)

Session 3: Energy Transition in Films
Chair: Hiroki Shin (Birkbeck)
• Jan Hicks (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry), ‘Extolling the Virtues of Electricity: Three Films by Alexandre Esway for the British Electrical Development Association’
• Hans Georg Thomas (RWE), ‘“No other energy is … so clean, so invisible and as safe as … the electric current.” Advertising for Electricity in Film in Germany’

Session 4: Techniques of Filming and Seeing Energy in Films
Chair: Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck)
• Hiroki Shin (Birkbeck), ‘The Choreography of Energy Transitions in Japan’s Energy Films’
• Graham Roberts (Leeds Trinity), ‘“Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country (Lenin)”: The Idealised/Ideological Representation of Electrification in the USSR during the first Five Year Plan 1928-32.

Comments
• Florian Hoof (Goethe University, Frankfurt)

Comments from MCE
• Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck)